


The End of Sentiment Affair

by tempered_rose



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Poor Illya, Spoilers, gallya, the man from u.n.c.l.e. spoilers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempered_rose/pseuds/tempered_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>SPOILERS for the end of the movie</b>!!! Don't say I didn't warn you!</p><p>Illya does a little reflecting about the Chop Shop Girl as the mission winds down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of Sentiment Affair

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen this movie twice in two days and oh my God. I love it. I love this ship as well as it sails itself. Hopefully more fic will come soon? And a sequel perhaps??? :DDD
> 
> Here be my contribution ~~so far~~ to this fandom, and hopefully more will come :) Please read and review, concrit is welcome. :)

The drops of rain began to cascade from the sky, smacking him in the face and rousing him to consciousness once again. Everything was blurry and his sense of hearing was horrendously impaired by the ringing in his ears. Was that thunder? No, it was the sound of a gunshot. Too dazed, he was, to even react to it except to try and come out of his stupor.

How long had he been knocked unconscious? Days? Hours? Seconds?

Illya groaned quietly and tried to put his head straight sooner rather than later, but too many things were spinning inside of his mind for that to be the case.

The smell of leather and shoe polish. Ticking clocks that never stopped. Shouting louder and louder. Freezing cold rain on his skin. Illya tried to push the memories of his childhood away and find something pleasant to bring him back around.

The smell of fresh soap and a field of flowers, skin kissed by the sun and warmth, so much warmth it burned him to touch her. Eyes the color of coffee mixed with the slightest amount of cream. Simply, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and he ached for her. His fingers twitched, but this time not out of anger or rage, but the urge, the _itch_ to touch her, hold her, but she was gone.

Where had Gaby gone? He had to find her.

Sharp stinging betrayal sliced through his marrow as he remembered the words she spoke that had betrayed his location. He was still too disoriented to remember that she hadn’t been a traitor to him and Cowboy after all, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t loved many people in his love, and he struggled to define the foolish sentiment he held towards her to be such an emotion, but at the very least he was fond of her and for her to have revealed him so emotionlessly…

Illya remembered one of the first rules of being a successful KGB agent. Never develop sentiment or an attachment to any one or anything less you sign your own death warrant. The Americans were full of emotional outbursts and letting their feelings dictate their actions over rational, reasonable things such as logic and facts; and by allowing oneself to become overwhelmed with the feeling of affection, you only made yourself weak. It was a policy he had learned well and thought he would never need to apply. After all, it was easy to not form attachments when you had ‘episodes’ that isolated you from your peers and the only people you missed—your parents—were taken from you in your youth. Fear of joining them in Siberia and guilt for things he could never confess to made him a wonderful and feared member of the Soviet spy network.

And then there was Gaby. The only one he thought was truly innocent in this mess of nuclear weapons and two countries that continuously tried to best one another. The one he had thought was in a similar situation to him, being left by their father at an early age. How wrong he had been. She played the game, played _him_ , better than anyone else had and for far longer. Damn her. She was no more innocent than he was, and she had committed a greater sin than he, hadn’t she?

She hasn’t betrayed me. _Working for the British._ She’s alive? _Everything hurts_. Gaby…has Cowboy gotten to her? That damned Italian aristocrat will pay for thinking about touching her.

Her name runs over and over through his mind, the way breaking news comes across a decoding machine. Illya struggles to open his eyes again, this time it’s difficult because the sting of rain meets his eyes and he has to close them to avoid being blinded by precipitation. He feels the weight of half of his stolen motorcycle on him and he suddenly realizes that’s why it was so hard to breathe. He can hear thunder, no, the gunshot, from across the rocky slope and he sees the American go down. There isn’t much time.

Illya sees Gaby leap onto the Italian and he’s up and moving before he realizes that his body really does hurt in ways that he will definitely feel once the adrenaline has worn off. But nothing else matters the instant he sees the brute of a man throw Gaby from his back. She goes to the ground and Illya isn’t sure if the rage he feels comes out in a violent roar, but he kind of hopes that it does. He slams the motorcycle into the Italian and a knife is pulled from his belt before he can think of any consequences. The man is up in front of him, gun in hand, but it doesn’t matter. Illya’s run him through and the warmth of his life leaving him coats Illya’s hand.

He’s only stunned by his actions for a moment before he pushes the dying man away and wipes the blood off on his trousers as best he can. It’s a courtesy only that he checks on Solo before moving on to the real source of his concern. Solo doesn’t seem to mind, going for the radio as he is, and Illya never stopped to hear his answer.

Before he realizes it, he’s on his knees and sees Gaby in shock. She’s trembling and not because she’s scared anymore, or sexually interested in him the way she lied about earlier before this became even more of a giant mess. Illya cradles her head in his arms and he quiets her softly, as best he can and he really hopes it’s enough. Being comforting isn’t exactly one of the things the KGB taught him. He holds her close, as close as he can without hurting her further and waits for the helicopter to arrive with medical treatments and the bomb teams.

They arrive sooner than he would have given the British credit for, almost as if they were prepared for some sort of travesty, and he watches with hawk-like vision as Gaby is lifted into the helicopter for some one on one attention by a nurse. He can’t see her in there, the privacy of the giant mechanical machine blocking his line of sight and he hates that she’s away from him. He knows he doesn’t have the skills that a certified nurse does, but he could have helped. Couldn’t he? His fists are clenched even as he’s seen by another nurse. They seem even more surprised than Solo was to realize nothing was actually broken. He thinks he hears the American make comment on the fact that perhaps behind the Iron curtain they put Iron in the bones of their agents. Whatever he says earns a small sound of amusement from the medical professional and with one icy glare, they make an excuse and scatter as Illya intended. Good, he thinks, as he waits as near as he can to the helicopter without being in the way too much.

He wants to pace, wants to throw things and hurt something even more than he wants to pace, but he doesn’t. She needs him. And there’s still work to be done. Victoria is still out there somewhere, and Gods help her when he gets his hands on her…

“Mister Kuryakin?” The politeness in the tone makes Illya blink as he looks over at the naval officer calling to him. “The nurse and Mr. Waverly say you can look after her while the bomb squad are working on the warhead.”

Illya nods and steps over when Gaby sits up, looking disheveled but still so very beautiful. He doesn’t touch her, afraid she would break if he did. He keeps his hands in the safest place he can, in fists as his arms cross over his chest and he stands silent sentry beside her. He wonders if she’s been hurt terribly, but she’s quiet, so very quiet and he doesn’t want to bother her. Maybe she needs her silence to heal. Maybe there’s nothing he can say anyway. Maybe she already knows he forgives her for letting them believe she betrayed them. Maybe she doesn’t and thinks he’s mad at her, as if that would ever be possible.

“…small snag. It’s not the correct warhead. It’s not been nuclearized.”

Waverly’s words float into his brain and he looks positively murderous when he realizes that he risked life and limb and broken bones—not to mention Gaby—in the process of chasing the wrong bloody bomb. He wants to separate Victoria’s limbs from her body slowly and in the most painful ways possible, the way she would have let Gaby’s uncle destroy Cowboy if he’d had the chance.

They’re off again before he can really process everything. He’s never seen an aircraft carrier before and he’s impressed by the engineering and feat of it even after he’s already seen it. They don’t have things like that in Russia, or maybe they do but he’s never seen them. He wonders if the Americans have them too, or if it’s just the British. He keeps his thoughts to himself as he stands fiercely protective of Gaby in the conn and the incessant chattering of British accents float around his ears.

He can tell she’s close to him, but he doesn’t think she’s close enough. He’ll never think that. Illya can remember the weight of her on his chest. She wasn’t that heavy but she was stronger than she looked. He wondered if she was like that always or if the British had drilled that into her. He hoped it was natural instinct, but he wasn’t sure now. It didn’t matter.

Illya knows the mission was successful if Solo’s pearly smile was anything to go by. But it means they’ll be separating soon and what will become of his Chop Shop girl? Sudden waves of panic cross over Illya’s chest in the vicinity of his heart and he can’t stand the thought of her being away from him, but it doesn’t make any sense for her to return with him. Even if she weren’t a British spy—which is a stupid enough thought by itself because she is, he knows she is and there’s nothing he can do to change what she has done, therefore there’s no point in pretending otherwise—it would look extremely unwise to have the daughter and niece of Nazis and an East Berliner to boot, return home to Russia with him. Not that she would ever want to go. She’s already escaped from the Iron Curtain, why would she ever consent to going back under it, especially for someone like him?

It’s with that thought and the image of Gaby smiling at something Solo has said that has him disappearing before anyone can notice and he’s in his quarters of the aircraft carrier. He lays his body on the cot, overhanging it at the end, and he stares at the gray painted metal ceiling over his head and folds his hands calmly over his abdomen. Here he will stay, he tells himself, until the large vessel docks in port.

The harder part is telling himself that he _will_ walk away from Gaby and leave her with her new life of freedom in the West. A place he can never go simply because of who he is and what he’s done. It’s an impasse, a wall that’s as big as Russia herself and deeper than any trench that’s been dug in Berlin. But he will do it. He will walk away because he has to. He has a duty and if he doesn’t there will be worse consequences for him, worse than losing the only one who he thinks he could love.

Jealous begins to gnaw at him. She’ll be left alone with Solo most likely, at least for a while. They’ll both return to London first. Whether she goes with him to New York is something that remains open for debate. Illya rubs the place on his wrist where his father’s watch used to be with a single finger; it’s become a habit he’s done since the watch disappeared a few days ago. Has it only been a few days? It feels like a lifetime and he thinks maybe it has been. His heart has only lived for a few days and it is all over, a knife is going through him as he thinks about all the things Solo will try on her and he hopes, prays, she won’t fall for his charms. She hasn’t so far, but that’s only because Illya’s been lurking too close to be in the shadows. He wonders if he hadn’t interrupted them that first night when she escaped over the wall where it would have ended for the pair of them.

Illya wonders if she would have fallen in love with him if he’d been the one pretending to be her fiancé this week instead of himself. Did she love him? He almost made a sound of amused contempt for the thought. Of course she didn’t, how could she? She loved her drinks before bed, her books, and dancing and shopping and all the things that he supposed all women truly liked to do. Why would she _ever_ love the cold-handed brute that could so very easily break her, crush her?

He stops himself there, making himself sick with just the thought of the possibility of hurting her. He sits up, head almost between his knees as he lets himself become disheveled. He runs a hand through his hair and he presses his lips tighter together than the line that they almost always are. He presses them so tight that he feels the pressure against them, his jaw begins to ache as his teeth join the effort and he’s clenching his mouth shut because if he doesn’t then he’ll scream, he’ll lose it, and he doesn’t want the British to see him collapse. He represents the motherland now and he can’t afford to show her in bad grace, not after what he’s just helped accomplish.

Illya almost doesn’t hear the door squeak open but it’s too bloody loud in the calamity of his mind for him not to and he glances up. If he hadn’t been sitting on the bed, he surely would have fallen off of it because she’s _here_ and he doesn’t know why. The confusion must show on his face because she’s speaking in her soft, docile way and Illya loves the sound of her voice. Loves her, but he won’t confess it.

“You left, I came to see why.” She leans against the wall and watches him. He notes the guarded look and a lie is already slipping from his mouth before he can stop it.

“I wanted to lie down.”

She walks gracefully across the cabin and rests her hands on his shoulders. He doesn’t dream of shrugging them off or sending her away. Curiosity has him holding still as she looks into his eyes. He wouldn’t look away if the Kremlin paid him millions to do so.

“Are you all right?” She whispers and he nods once. Tears are bubbling in her eyes but her stubbornness refuses to let them fall. There’s a harder edge in her voice when she speaks. “I thought…I thought you were gone. When you fell, I—”

He stops her with a finger over her lips and he doesn’t know why she was so worried about him, to the point of tears? He never would have imagined.

“I am here. As I promised I would be.” He says and lets himself give her a small smile. “I am not worth these tears.”

“Fool.” She calls him. The word is barely more than a syllable formed on an exhale of breath as she leans down and Illya is frozen as she kisses him. He expects Solo to burst in or a sailor to come shouting down the corridor for whatever banal reason. When nothing happens to separate them, he brings his hands up to rest lightly on her hips as he pulls her closer to his body. She’s standing between his thighs now and her elbow rests uncomfortably on his injured shoulder while her other arm is wrapped around his head and her hand is in his hair. She tastes divine, better than anything he has ever tasted before. This time she doesn’t smell like alcohol and he can let himself doubly enjoy the warmth of her body and smell of her faded perfume.

The distraction he’d been waiting for comes in the form of a wave that rocks the carrier enough to have him fall on his back, braced by an elbow, and Gaby is on top of him now. He soothes her non-existent feathers by running his hand along her back. Silently, he asks if she’s all right and she nods. Illya shifts them on the bed so that he is laying on his back as he had been earlier, only this time she’s nestled in the crook of his arm and he’s holding her against his side. She’s so small to him and that makes her even more precious. He keeps hold of her hand as he kisses her again, daring to hope that she does feel something for him, and Gaby squeezes it softly.

She ultimately falls asleep on him, exhaustion from her injuries and shock taking over, and he doesn’t mind. He joins her soon after and promises himself never, ever to forget the feeling of her body so close to his and the smell of her hair. It’s not perfect and that’s what he loves about it. Nothing about either of them are perfect, so why should their sharing a bed and a kiss be so? Illya thinks there’s a perfection of its own in just that but he doesn’t say anything.

He’s already asleep and dreaming of waking up next to her again in the future. He only can pray to have the chance. Illya doesn’t want to picture a world without her in it, but at least knowing she’s safe is something and for now it’ll do.

In a few hours, the first cognizant thought he’ll have when he wakes is how beautiful she looks when she’s asleep. The second will be how the hell is Solo dressed in a tailored suit when they are onboard a ship that shouldn’t have such a wardrobe installed in it, never mind what was he doing in Illya’s cabin in the first place.

But the third and final thought he’ll have is how bad will it hurt when he has to watch Gaby walk away with the suave American? How bad will he break and will he ever be able to fix himself in the fallout? Illya won’t know the answers and that’ll be what scares him more than the thought of falling in love with someone who just maybe might love him back ever would.


End file.
